Comic Book Galaxy
August 9, 2005
The Hope Larson Interview
Freelance illustrator and cartoonist Hope Larson's first book,
Salamander Dream, was initially serialized at her and Kean Soo’s
Secret Friend Society website. Completed in July and now collected
in a single, printed volume from AdHouse
Books, this 96-page comic
tells a simple, but hardly simplistic, tale of a girl's relationship
with nature, depicted in the book as sort of an animal spirit.
But Larson's characteristic abstraction in both her art and stories
are employed in more of a poetic than surreal manner, so the result
is less fanciful, more matter-of-fact than it may sound.
In terms
of Larson’s still-young career as a comics creator, Salamander
Dream seems parallel to current indie comics darling Craig Thompson’s
Goodbye, Chunky Rice: it is the first major work by a bold new
voice in the comics field. Judging from "Mud," a short contribution
to the forthcoming You Ain’t No Dancer anthology (due in October)
and Gray Horses, another longer work due early next year from
Oni Press, it’s a voice that not quieting down anytime soon.
Gordon
McAlpin interviewed Larson for Comic Book Galaxy, about her
unusual introduction to the world of cartooning, the origins of
Salamander
Dream, and
where she’s headed next.
I've heard that when you first met [Larson's husband and
Scott Pilgrim creator] Bryan Lee O'Malley, you weren't
actually interested in comics, or
at least not doing them yourself…
Well, I was interested in doing them when I was in high school,
but I never really pursued that. I was (taking) more…like the standard
art classes. I went into Animation in college and quickly decided
that wasn't for me, so from there
I
went into Illustration, which was a lot more of my thing. But I didn't
really feel challenged by the program at the school that I was
at, which was the Rochester
Institute of Technology, so after my sophomore year, I transferred
to the School of the Art Institute [of Chicago]. Then I sort of
just bounced around and [studied]
painting and got into printmaking.
Around that time, in my junior year,
Scott McCloud was somehow tipped off to my website [the now-defunct
www.thingwithfeathers.com]
and posted on his blog that I should be drawing comics. So I came
home from… work
at a video store — and there was an e-mail sitting in my inbox from
Lea Hernandez who was asking if I would be interested in doing a comic
strip for Girlamatic.com.
I thought that would be worth trying, even though I didn't really know
what I was doing and didn't really read a lot of comics regularly… and
I still don't, actually. That was I Was There and Just Returned.
So I tried that, and…pretty
much failed. I just couldn't keep up with it at the same time as school.
How
long did you keep up the schedule?
I want to say two months, but that might be overstating it…
Considering your first attempt at an ambitiously long
narrative was... unsuccessful, do you think you'll try your hand
at an "epic" again
anytime soon?
I don't know. Now that I've worked my way through a book
and a half, both of
which are around a hundred pages long, I definitely see the
appeal of creating either a longer work or a series. I don't think
my style
has settled enough
that I could do it successfully at this point, but it is in
the back of my mind as
a future goal.
What was your next piece?
I started doing some really experimental mini-comic type
things for school. I think all of them are on my website. I did
these
little accordion
(fold)
kind
of things, and I did some offset-printed stuff. Then, around
there, Kazu got in touch with me about maybe doing Flight
Vol. 1. I was talking
to Neil Babra
and a couple of other cartoonists that I kept in touch
with after sort of flopping at Girlamatic, and I decided that I
would
give Flight a
try. They asked me
to color a piece for Erika Moen, and the idea was that
I would do that and then
for the next volume, I would contribute a story.
And that was "Weather Vain."
Right.
Had you done anything in-between?
No, just some mini-comics.
Where did "Mud" fit in?
I actually did that at the same time that I was drawing Salamander
Dream.
They have a very similar aesthetic. They definitely
look different than "Weather
Vain."
Oh… when I was doing "Weather Vain" and during the last time that I
was at the Art Institute, I was doing all of my art in Adobe Illustrator.
In the Fall
of
2004 — actually, I guess over the summer — I started experimented with
brush inking, and that is what I do now exclusively.
One of the big
reasons that
I did Salamander Dream was that it was the dead of winter,
and I was waiting to
become a permanent resident, so I couldn't legally do
any work in Canada, and I was really lonely. It was cold, and there
was snow outside, and
I was far
away from everything familiar… so it was the project
that I did to get me through the winter.
You've said
that you were kind of struggling
to come up with a
story and that Dylan Meconis and Sara Rosenbaum suggested
you work a little more autobiographically?
Yeah.
And then you came up with Salamander Dream. Do you often
run into animal spirits in the woods?
I never do, but I was just sort of trying to capture
the way it felt to be a kid. That was one of the things
that I always sort of imagined
when I was
little,
that there are all these things out in the woods and
they are sort of aware of you. Although…I'm not like
a crazy hippie-dippie girl. I don't mean that in a real
sense. It's more about being aware of nature.
I did pick up on the theme in Salamander
Dream as being about the main character's connection
to nature and how she goes
off to college and
never goes back, or maybe, but just to a different place.
When you were at the Art Institute, did you feel disconnected
from nature?
Yeah. And it was even more so when I moved to Toronto,
because that was the next place that I ended up. It's
really, really similar to
Chicago. I felt
like I
didn't even really move, except that I didn't know where
anything was, and it is a different country.
I'm surprised
that you did do Salamander
Dream in
the
winter, because it has a very warm, kind of dreamlike
feel to the story.
That was exactly what I wanted, because
that was what I was missing,
so it was the most natural thing. I don't think I could
sit down and draw a comic
about
winter. Especially if it was winter, because I would
just be so miserable. It's funny, because the book that
I'm doing right now — Gray Horses for Oni [due
out in March 2005] — that is set in the
summer, and then the thing that I'm planning for after
that is also set in the summer.
I guess, maybe that'll
be a theme.
Gray Horses is pretty heavily based on living
in Chicago and a little bit in Toronto. And sort of being
on your
own in the city for the first
time.
What was your experience with comics growing up?
I went to France when I was, I think, seven. Before [that],
I had no awareness of comic at all. When we went to France,
that was the first
time that I started
seeing them, because they were in bookstore. And because
I became fluent in France when I was there, I was able
to read the Asterix and the Tintin books,
and they
were just gorgeous, so my brother and I started… reading
them.
I'm a huge Tintin fan.
They're fantastic. I still buy those. I try to only get
them in French, because it just makes me nostalgic.
Good practice.
Yeah, that, too. And then I came back to the US after
a year, and…no
more comics. I didn't know where to get them. There was
really only one comics shop in my
hometown, and there still is the same one. It's
kind of crappy…
And by "crappy," you mean it's all mainstream super-hero
stuff?
Yeah, pretty much that…I haven't been there in a
couple of years. They mean really well, and they're really
nice guys, but…especially as a
younger girl, there really wasn't a whole lot to lure
me in there.
Whose work do you follow
now?
I tend to buy graphic novels exclusively. I really like
Kevin Huizenga. I like Seth a lot. I love Craig Thompson.
I always feel like I'm not
supposed to say
that. Sam Hiti, I like. The last thing he did was The
Long, Dark Train, which is really awesome. He's really
organic, and he uses spot colors,
so I like
that a lot.
Another one is Geneviève Castrée, who is
a French-Canadian cartoonist. She does these really dreamlike
things. We
have sort of a similar style… I
wouldn't say she was really an inspiration, because I'd
been doing that kind of thing
before
I was familiar with her stuff. And I also like David
B. a lot.
You know, for being someone who claims not
to read a lot of comics, you
sure know some obscure
stuff…
Hah, well, I credit that to hanging around folks with good
taste -- Mal and the folks at the Beguiling (in Toronto).
Who would you say
has inspired you
as an
illustrator?
I have so much trouble with this question. Because I
feel like I just absorb things from everywhere. The stuff
that I consciously put in
is usually prehistoric
art, medieval art…Really iconic stuff. I really try hard
not to be influenced by contemporary creators. It's hard
to say how much I succeed
at that, because
it's so hard for me to see my own work clearly. I would
say that the one person that I consciously ape would
be Seth, for inking, and a
little bit for design.
Some of the undulating panel borders definitely reminded
me of Seth, although your stories are very different,
I think. Every artist [picks]
stuff up here
and there.
Anyway, you sort of, in a way, came from webcomics.
I guess some of your peers may be a little more into
the webcomics "scene," because
Kazu does Copper, and a number of the other Flight contributors
are huge webcomics
people — that's
kind of how it originated, right?
Yeah.
Where do you think the future in web comics lies? I mean,
[with] a book like Salamander Dream that is entirely
available on the internet,
what do you think
the incentive to purchase a physical comic would be?
Well, the idea for us — for me and [Jellaby creator]
Kean — with putting
our comics on the internet was partly to build a readership,
since neither of us
have a fairly large one. We sort of wanted to promote
ourselves a little bit, and we also wanted to find a
publisher. And we were thinking that
one of the
easiest ways to do that would be to have it just sitting
there on the internet where anybody could access it.
As far as if I think more people
will (or won't)
buy the book, because it's free on the internet, but
it seems like a lot of people have been pretty successful
just collecting their serialized
webcomics.
How many hits does Salamander Dream get on average?
The SFS's hits fluctuate between an average of 750 or
800 on weekdays and 300 or 400 on Saturday and Sunday,
when the site doesn't update.
We aren't real
high
rollers, but I was never expecting Salamander Dream to
appeal to tons of people. The pacing is incredibly slow
for a webcomic, and it isn't
really a webcomic
-- it's a print comic uploaded to the web. A lot of people…told
me they stopped reading part-way through because they
didn't want to "spoil" the
book, and I don't blame them!
Flight Vol. 3 has been
picked up by Random House, and you
briefly
discussed this in the Fanboy Radio interview.
One thing that sort of actually… I
don't mean to knock them, because I think Fanboy Radio
is a great show… but
they kept referring to the comics industry as, like,
this [exclusive] thing. Like when
a book publisher such as Random House gets into the business
of publishing comics, somehow that was "outside" of (the
comics industry). That bothered me.
Yeah, that was the
very end of the interview, so I couldn't get
a word in there
to say, "I disagree!… I disagree!" I definitely think
that — or, I hope
that — as
more graphic novels are published by bigger publishers,
there will be more of an audience finding that stuff
in bookstores. I guess my
ultimate goal is
to
be published by a larger publisher like Random House
or, I don't even know who's in it right now…
But right now, I'm just sitting back and seeing how it
all goes, because there's just so much buzz about graphic
novels right now, and I really
want to believe
that they're going to make good on that, but it could
also just explode… in
a bad way.
What is the single greatest comics work, short
or long, in the history of the medium?
If you'd asked me in high school I'd have said Ranma
1ž2, and in early
college I'd have said Ghost World or Jimmy
Corrigan.
But I can't choose a book now.
With almost all comics I feel like there's a disconnect
between the art and the story:
the books that are the most conceptually or artistically
brilliant don't grip me emotionally, and successful narratives
rarely do delightful
formal
things,
and obviously I'm a sucker for those. I think art school
may have scrambled my ability to judge.
